"The reason I am asking is because this scenario is playing out with a friend and her college-aged daughter. Friend and her dd have always been very close, got along well. Dd returned to college this semester after break and defriended her mother without any explanation. Would that defriending be considered rude? Or does it not count because FB does not ever count in etiquette?"

Your question at the end forces an either-or choice that's not valid, in that Facebook interactions (like any other interaction) can have etiquette ramifications but there's no particular action that's rude just because it's Facebook. Consider other methods of communicating and see if it still strikes you as rude. Say this friend's daughter suddenly never answered the phone but kept in contact via email or texting. Say she calls but never emails. It's easy to see that choosing a particular path to interact but not another isn't intrinsically rude, and so in this case defriending her mother wouldn't be rude unless she made some prior promise to stay Facebook friends with her mother. It's just a method of interacting and how someone uses Facebook is their own choice.

Virg

So you wouldn't think it rude if your kid stopped, for example, taking your phone calls without explanation or warning? I guess I would think that quite rude.

And also -- isn't FB more than "just a method of interacting"? Isn't FB also a way to share photographs, details of your life, etc?

"The reason I am asking is because this scenario is playing out with a friend and her college-aged daughter. Friend and her dd have always been very close, got along well. Dd returned to college this semester after break and defriended her mother without any explanation. Would that defriending be considered rude? Or does it not count because FB does not ever count in etiquette?"

Your question at the end forces an either-or choice that's not valid, in that Facebook interactions (like any other interaction) can have etiquette ramifications but there's no particular action that's rude just because it's Facebook. Consider other methods of communicating and see if it still strikes you as rude. Say this friend's daughter suddenly never answered the phone but kept in contact via email or texting. Say she calls but never emails. It's easy to see that choosing a particular path to interact but not another isn't intrinsically rude, and so in this case defriending her mother wouldn't be rude unless she made some prior promise to stay Facebook friends with her mother. It's just a method of interacting and how someone uses Facebook is their own choice.

Virg

So you wouldn't think it rude if your kid stopped, for example, taking your phone calls without explanation or warning? I guess I would think that quite rude.

And also -- isn't FB more than "just a method of interacting"? Isn't FB also a way to share photographs, details of your life, etc?

The situation you are describing has nothing to do with what the OP described. So I'm not sure if you were commenting on the OP or asking a completely separate question from the OP.

So you wouldn't think it rude if your kid stopped, for example, taking your phone calls without explanation or warning? I guess I would think that quite rude.

And also -- isn't FB more than "just a method of interacting"? Isn't FB also a way to share photographs, details of your life, etc?

Not if he was still answering my emails and texts. When I first got FB I friended my son, but then realized that I didn't want to be "friends" with him, so I defriended him and never did friend my daughter. I love my kids and interact with them often over the phone, texts, and email, but I don't want them on my FB. There are lots of real life friends that I don't want to FB with, that doesn't mean I don't want to communicate with them.

"Sorry I defriended you before. Do we have anything in common since the last 20 years have passed?"

I think this part rubs me the wrong way. You can defriend anyone, it's not rude, but don't expect someone to justify to you why they should stay friends or be re-friended. If you don't want to be friends with them, just don't be. You don't need to make it a production.

Please rest assured that I have never actually said or typed this to anyone on FB. It's something that sits in the back of my mind. Usually, if I accept a second request, I get a lot more interaction from that person.

I would say that defriending on Facebook is not the same as defriending in real life. But defriending still counts, and still means something - it's not a null action.

Defriending someone you no longer interact with in real life is pretty mild, and falls under the keeping Facebook manageable banner. Same with defriending someone that have only a tenuous contact with, and no interest in maintaining a real world friendship.

Defriending someone because they don't comment personally to your postings is an intermediate level - people's commenting/liking level varies, and someone can be interested in following your postings without you knowing it. Defriending at that point can be seen as a rejection.

Defriending someone because of their posting style or content (political rants, antagonistic behaviour, constant posting of urban legends and false information) is a much stronger move, but is often warranted, and can be explained, and doesn't necessarily negate a real-world friendship, in the same way that you can refuse to discuss politics/religion with particular family members and friends.

Defriending someone with whom you are close in real life, when they haven't done unusual or upsetting in either real world interaction or on Facebooks - that's more extreme, and is something that is likely to be seen as a direct rejection or insult in the relationship itself, outside of Facebook.

IN the example given in this thread - college aged daughter has a close relationship with her mother, but cuts her out of Facebook without explanation - is one I would say that falls firmly in the rude camp. I can think of several reasons why a college aged girl, newly away from home, might not want to be Facebook friends with her mother (both benign ones and troubling ones), but she owes her mother an explanation before cutting her off.

IN the example given in this thread - college aged daughter has a close relationship with her mother, but cuts her out of Facebook without explanation - is one I would say that falls firmly in the rude camp. I can think of several reasons why a college aged girl, newly away from home, might not want to be Facebook friends with her mother (both benign ones and troubling ones), but she owes her mother an explanation before cutting her off.

And there are a lot of settings now that could minimize what she shares with Mom while keeping the Facebook-friendship status intact (though I never quite trust those to work permanently, but that's a rant for another day).

What is one quietly defriends someone with whom they DO have a close relationship with no explanation?

The reason I am asking is because I'm trying to understand FB etiquette in general and due to a particular circumstance going on right now. This scenario of quiet defriending is playing out with a friend and her college-aged daughter. Friend and her dd have always been very close, got along well. Dd returned to college this semester after break and defriended her mother without any explanation. Would that defriending be considered rude? Or does it not count because FB does not ever count in etiquette?

Your question at the end forces an either-or choice that's not valid, in that Facebook interactions (like any other interaction) can have etiquette ramifications but there's no particular action that's rude just because it's Facebook. Consider other methods of communicating and see if it still strikes you as rude. Say this friend's daughter suddenly never answered the phone but kept in contact via email or texting. Say she calls but never emails. It's easy to see that choosing a particular path to interact but not another isn't intrinsically rude, and so in this case defriending her mother wouldn't be rude unless she made some prior promise to stay Facebook friends with her mother. It's just a method of interacting and how someone uses Facebook is their own choice.

Virg

So you wouldn't think it rude if your kid stopped, for example, taking your phone calls without explanation or warning? I guess I would think that quite rude.

And also -- isn't FB more than "just a method of interacting"? Isn't FB also a way to share photographs, details of your life, etc?

So, a college girl defriended her mother. They are close.

I am FB friends with my Dad. I censor what I put on FB for this reason. Perhaps she decided she no longer wished to censor herself? Or felt the FB friendship with her mother had grown intrusive? And an explanation might be nice, but I also see it starting an argument and hurting feelings.

Being my friend doesn't entitle you to a FB connection, in the same way my friends aren't entitled to look at my photo albums in my home, or hear conversations I have with other people. Just because I share things on FB doesn't mean I have to.

It is never rude to defriend anyone for any reason. FB isn't in person. You don't need to justify how you use it.

I'm not sure I understand your post. Are you saying that rudeness can only happen in person?

No, she's saying it is not rude to defriend because it is not the same as cutting someone off in person (I think) One can be rude online, for sure, but just quietly defriending someone is not rude.

What is one quietly defriends someone with whom they DO have a close relationship with no explanation?

The reason I am asking is because I'm trying to understand FB etiquette in general and due to a particular circumstance going on right now. This scenario of quiet defriending is playing out with a friend and her college-aged daughter. Friend and her dd have always been very close, got along well. Dd returned to college this semester after break and defriended her mother without any explanation. Would that defriending be considered rude? Or does it not count because FB does not ever count in etiquette?

This doesn't mean she doesn't love her mother. It means she wants to post pictures of herself at wild parties, and talk about boys.

There is not "official Facebook etiquette", because it hasn't been around long enough to develop any, and its structure seems to go against many of our traditional expectations of privacy versus inclusiveness.

"So you wouldn't think it rude if your kid stopped, for example, taking your phone calls without explanation or warning? I guess I would think that quite rude."

No, I wouldn't, presuming as I stated that my kid was staying in touch by some other means. I might ask why my kid did that, but I wouldn't consider the action rude and I'd accept any reasoning given, including being told not to ask about the reason.

"And also -- isn't FB more than "just a method of interacting"? Isn't FB also a way to share photographs, details of your life, etc?"

I can and do interact in all of those ways with people in my life by other means already. Facebook is just a method for doing any/all of them, but you can do that stuff by other means. More importantly, the "child" is a college-age adult, and so has every right to choose the means of communication that she prefers. You didn't say whether this DD communicates with her mother by any other means so I might be presumptuous to assume that she's still in contact, but you did say they were close and so I'd find it really odd if she cut off contact with her mother entirely, and if that's the case then I'd have to wonder what else there is to the story so I still couldn't necessarily label the daughter rude.

blarg314 wrote:

"IN the example given in this thread - college aged daughter has a close relationship with her mother, but cuts her out of Facebook without explanation - is one I would say that falls firmly in the rude camp. I can think of several reasons why a college aged girl, newly away from home, might not want to be Facebook friends with her mother (both benign ones and troubling ones), but she owes her mother an explanation before cutting her off."

I disagree. Firstly, I find that one big problem here is that people seem to be forgetting that the DD is an adult. I'm very close to my mother but I wouldn't really want her to share in the discussions I had with my friends when I was in college, for a multitude of reasons. As an adult, the DD has every right to filter her Facebook friends down to what she wants, she doesn't need any better reason than "I want it that way", and she's not rude for using Facebook to her preference. Secondly, on the basis of my comment to Cami above, the rationale that defriending someone on Facebook must equate to cutting that person off entirely is factually inaccurate. Facebook is one of a very large number of methods of interacting, and like any other given method some people use it and some don't, and people use it for some things and not others. That doesn't make defriending someone (even without explanation) de facto rude.

The problem is, Facebook really isn't like any previous form of communication. It used to be, we could control who knew what about our activities, because we had to choose to speak to specific people, or write letters to them.

Facebook is more like putting your life in a newspaper, and distributing it wholesale. It's much more difficult to arrange it so that Mom doesn't hear about your romantic escapades, while your friends don't hear you discussing cute stories about when you were five and ran naked out of the bath into your parents' cocktail party. Yes, there are privacy settings, but they are complex enough that even experienced users may suddenly realize, oh, cripes, I didn't mean for HER to read THAT!

I would say that what springs to mind when a young woman defriends her mother, is that she wants to make sure that her mother isn't exposed to some of the things she and her friends talk about, rather than she doesn't want to communicate with her mom.

In fact, I'm not yet convinced that Facebook is really an effective means of communication. Right now, at least, it seems really cludgy when it comes to the subtleties of relationships.

I have defriended about 80 people. Why did I even connect with them to begin with? I don't know. Mostly from HS, over 30 years have passed & not 2 words spoken, so I gave up & unfriended one night. One or 2 I unfriended because they gossiped about me, thanks a lot. So IMO it is not rude to unfriend. Frankly when the subject comes up I just say that my newsfeed was hopelessly cluttered & had to make some changes, as if I didn't know I could remove them from my feed. Honestly the drama involved with some folks....it's just not worth the 2 hour "why" answer when they probably won't get it anyway.

Now I find that - ahem, this is an embarrassing admission - I have to stop myself from "judging" people with anything more than 300 -400 friends. There is no way that person can keep up with every.single.post (I'm judging again, darn) of all 400 "friends" - be transparent about it & cull the friends list. Its not my place to judge, yes i know, but this tells me that numbers are more important than quality relat@tionships. Sorry, pet peeve i have. Rant over.